1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to an image forming apparatus, and more particularly to an image forming apparatus including a hard disk storage device for storing user registered data, and to a data display method.
2. Description of the Related Art
Various functions are appended to an image forming apparatus. For example, many image forming apparatuses have a standby function in which the image forming apparatus enters a sleep state (a resting state) when the apparatus is in the state not to be used in order to reduce power consumption. In the background art, a technique with which an image forming apparatus can be switched to a sleep state while satisfying a printing interruption request in order to respond to a printing interruption request in the sleep state has been disclosed.
In an image forming apparatus having this function, the image forming apparatus must first be restored to an active state from the sleep state. At such times, a user wishes to use the image forming apparatus immediately, and therefore a transition period from the sleep state to the active state is preferably as short as possible. During the transition from the sleep state to the active state, the process that takes the longest time is HDD (Hard Disk Drive) operation preparation. A wait period of approximately 15 seconds following power supply to the HDD is required for disk rotation to stabilize so that the HDD can read data. During this wait period, data stored on the HDD cannot be accessed.
In another conventional technique, a program provided in the HDD for restoring the image forming apparatus to the active state is stored in a non-volatile memory. In this apparatus, the program is read from the non-volatile memory when the image forming apparatus is restored to the active state, and therefore the transition period from the sleep state to the active state is shortened.
However, with the image forming apparatus according to this conventional technique, user registered data may be stored on the HDD, and therefore, even though the program can be activated immediately, the data cannot be used while the program is in use until HDD operation preparation is complete. In other words, even though the transition period to the active state is shortened such that operation preparation is completed in devices other than the HDD, the data in the HDD cannot be used until operation preparation in the HDD is complete. Examples of these data include documents, FAX numbers, and so on registered by the user.
Many users wish to use the image forming apparatus employing the data in the HDD while waiting for the completion of operation preparation in the HDD. In response to this demand, all of the data in the HDD may be stored in a non-volatile memory so that the data are accessed from the memory, for example. However, a non-volatile memory having a sufficient capacity to store all of the data in the HDD would be extremely expensive and is therefore unrealistic.